I am elated that a woman may be president during my lifetime, and I would be a fool to deny it. But I'm not voting for her'genitalia'. I will be voting for her pragmatism, which others call lack of vision. You know who has loads of vision? George W. Bush. Clinton is hardly a war-mongerer- she voted for the authorization at a time when many in congress did the same. So she hasn't groveled enough for some- groveling is easy. She's being honest. In those circumstances, she made the vote she thought was prudent. Politics is about compromise and consensus, not conscience and dreams.

In 2008 we don't need someone inspirational. We need someone who can lead this country out of this war before it ruins our economy, our military and our power. I trust Clinton can do it- I don't trust a freshamn senator, and I don't think either Obama or Edwards have the connections and power that Clinton and her husband have. I'd rather have an effective Clinton getting some of what I want than 'visionaries' failing utterly.

Wasn't it Germany that sentenced the man who stabbed Monica Seles's stabber to probation? This reminds me of the wierd 'open-mindedness' you see in old 70's movies about rapists and women killers. Also in Ann Rule's true crime books. Like it was the fashion to understand and coddle violent criminals, especially when their victims were women.

Conservative cultures with liberal enclaves can spawn some really wierd hybrids of liberal women haters. The fact that the judge is a woman doesn't really mitigate her hateful attitude.

Perhaps daycare has this effect on some kids. I think a lot of us who have used daycare might even agree that those parents who drop their very young kids off at 7 am and pick them up at 7 p.m. (I know parents who have done this) may not be parenting their kids enough for whatever reasons they have. A lot of working parents will probably agree that this is extreme. Where I live workings moms AND dads do seem to accomodate their schedules to be around their children as much as possible.

But what I want to see is the study that compares these daycare kids, even the ones who spend all their daylight hours there, with children of large families. Don't other children absorb a stay at home mom's attention as much as or more than a paying job does in a smaller familiy? I can't tell which students at my daughter's school were in daycare, but I have noticed that the ones from large families seem to be a little more wild and more apt to be missing homework and library books.

When I hear Democrats say that they are all for women's rights themselves but won't vote for HRC 'just because she's a woman', I want to scream. A feminist vote for HRC is not a symbolic vote just to prove to the world that a woman can lead. This woman is not Margaret Thatcher or Queen Elizabeth the First. It's a vote for a woman with a long history of supporting women's and children's rights. I find liberal people's willingness to dismiss that fact very suspect, and even a little irrational. She was ambivalent about the war when it started? So were a lot of Americans. She makes politically expedient decisions sometimes? If she didn't she would be a terrible politician. Some people may want to ask themselves 1) if they have ever actually listened to anything HRC has to say or 2) if they don't have some latent issues with powerful women.

I wholeheartedly support father's rights. FRA's love to say that

feminists don't feel the way I do, but mainstream feminism always

seems to support more paternal participation and responsibility.

The problem is that so many Father's Rights Activists are at least as off-putting as they say radical feminists are. Too many of them seem to have a very jaded attitude toward women. Women I know are afraid of men like that. I know they scare me.

If we can agree that not holding fathers accountable and not respecting them as parents are two sides of the same coin, then FRA's will see that

reasonable feminists have never been their enemies, but their allies.

I have never heard of a female athlete bullying smaller kids and generally acting like a stereotype of a dumb, popular jock. For that matter, I have never actually witnessed a male athlete doing this outside of characters in movies. I DO know that female college athletes tend to be good students. Remember, they, like most male college athletes, have little hopes of cashing in on their talent beyond a scholarship. Leave your issues about athletes out of this and be angry on behalf of these very young women who excel at their sport and got called whores because of it.

Persia is right. Believing the accuser doesn't make any of us monsters, just people who trusted a crazywoman. Intelligent people can be forgiven for believing a woman who tells a horrifying story, when we know that most rape victims prefer not to speak of their ordeal at all, let alone make up a false story. I even extend that understanding to the DA, whose job it is, after all, to believe victims, as least long enough to launch an investigation. Withholding exculpatory evidence and imprudently going public are less forgivable, but I'm sure that DAs do this sort of thing all the time, only the crimes are real and none of us call them on it.

The real culprit isn't the media, the public and the authorities who believed the non-victim- it's the non-victim herself. She has done a terrible thing and should be punished. I don't think she should get a pass because she's fragile or instable. Fragile, instable people rain a lot of destruction on people and get away with it because of people's kindheartedness. Throw the book at her, and give people who sympathize with rape victims a break.